In a remarkable discovery, shipwreck hunters in Scotland have located the wreck of HMS Hawke, a British warship sunk by a German U-boat in the North Sea nearly 110 years ago. The 387-foot-long cruiser, carrying 524 people, sank rapidly after being hit by a torpedo on October 15, 1914. While roughly 70 crew members survived by escaping into lifeboats, the loss of life was immense.
This discovery sheds light on the early stages of submarine warfare during World War I. Kevin Heath, a researcher with the Orkney-based Lost in Waters Deep group, explained that the British were initially unaware of the German U-boats’ ability to reach Scotland due to their limited diesel fuel range. However, by the war’s end, German U-boats, fueled in the mid-Atlantic, had expanded their range significantly, even reaching the United States.
HMS Hawke was one of several British warships assigned to blockade the German mainland, a strategy that kept the Imperial German Navy mostly confined to port. But the emergence of German U-boat technology allowed them to circumvent the blockade and target Allied warships and civilian ships.
The Hawke was sunk by a torpedo from U-9, commanded by Otto Weddigen, who later gained notoriety in Germany. Just weeks earlier, Weddigen and U-9 had sunk three British cruisers in the North Sea, resulting in over 1,400 deaths. These attacks sparked public outrage in Britain and cast a shadow on the Royal Navy’s reputation. However, they also prompted the British Admiralty to take the threat of German U-boats more seriously.
The wreck of the Hawke now rests on the seabed, approximately 360 feet below the surface, about 70 miles east of Fraserburgh, a coastal town in northeastern Scotland. The Lost in Waters Deep group stumbled upon the wreck on August 12th while returning from a dive to a seafloor obstruction marked on nautical charts, which turned out to be a false lead. The charted obstruction may have been an early, less accurate estimation of the Hawke’s location based on the Decca navigation system used before the advent of GPS.
Heath and his team determined the approximate location of the wreck using historical accounts of the sinking, including the German U-boat’s logbook. They have informed both the Royal Navy and the United Kingdom’s Hydrographic Office about the discovery. The site of the Hawke wreck is a war grave and therefore protected by law from interference and likely from future diving expeditions.
Underwater images captured by the group’s divers reveal the wreck in “remarkable” condition. The teak decking remains largely intact, along with the captain’s walkway at the stern and numerous guns, a testament to the ship’s wartime purpose. This discovery offers a tangible connection to a pivotal moment in naval history, allowing researchers and historians to gain valuable insights into the devastating impact of early submarine warfare.
